Establish dominance, think alpha male. But less is more, remember Al Gore in 2000? Not that kind of alpha male. Carry your revolution as if it has a really big dick, but you don’t need to whip it out to prove it. Be everybody’s daddy.

Don’t play musical chairs. Be ruthless whilst removing the former bastards in power. Why have a coup if you keep all the same people around?

Make friends with the army, but don’t make promises. You don’t want the people with the weaponry suddenly thinking they can throw a better revolution than yours.

The military likes to play with their guns, so let them handle any civil opposition that will undoubtedly crop up. You can’t bake a cake without breaking a few eggs. You can, however, hire somebody to break the eggs and bake whatever you tell them to bake.

Come up with a proper pronunciamiento to justify your new world order to the masses. Clarity trumps veracity. Remember a real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation.

The first person to tell a story wins, so get out there with whatever truth you like, and fast. Remember, a proper coup happens suddenly.

When delivering your first epistle, don’t try to be more fascinating than thou. The proletariat hates a show off.

The proletariat also hates a smartypants. Don’t lead with your philosophy. People need to be wined and dined a little, talk about them, then you can get down to ideology. Promise things.

Once you are in, spread out. The initial revolution will be a public in-your-face event, but remember that the best coup carries on behind the scenes and under the table for years to come. Quietly take over whatever you like, but of course start small. Identify all the mechanisms of public discipline and link them together one by one, under your own power structure.

Keep track of everything and everybody, subject everybody to a field of visibility and let them all know it: in this way you ensure that if anybody steps one toe outside of your idea of what they ought to be doing, they will make themselves visible. Let visibility be their trap, if only to prevent a coup designed to depose you.

Get rid of the old regime’s intellectuals, particularly if they are smarter than your intellectuals. Endeavor to have the smartest intellectuals. Do this through assimilation if you can at all manage it. Otherwise, just toss the ones you don’t like to the military. Now go.